Wedded Bliss or Something Like It
by She's a Star
Summary: Lily and James adjust to married life, with their best friends attempting to help. Alas, Sirius' definition of help is 'behave as insanely as possible'. Sequel to Meet the Parents.
1. A Siriusly Strange Start to the Sequel

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Wedded Bliss or Something Like It

The Long-Awaited (or not) Sequel To Meet the Parents

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by She's a Star

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Author's Note: I wasn't going to write this. Honestly, I wasn't. Quite frankly, when I finished MtP I was so happy to be done with it that I never wanted to get even slightly involved with such a thing again. But then, rather unfortunately, my dear friend Bohemian Storm fell head-over-heels in love with MtP Sirius. And so the idea for the MtP sequel arose. I wasn't actually going to . . . _write_ it. But then I did.

So now here is the first chapter, in all its glory.

Or something like that.

Enjoy?

One thing's for certain - this very well may drive me insane. But at least we're in on it together, right? 

. . . Right?

. . . Oh, I give up.

Also - I do apologize for the occasional seemingly slashy bit of interaction between Remus and Sirius. I have fallen in love with that ship, but am trying not to let it leak into this fic, as I know there's a good chance that people who read MtP may be opposed to slash.

And I'm done rambling now.

Honest.

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Chapter One: A Siriusly Strange Start to the Sequel

"I'm seeing . . . olive."

"Olive?" Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew repeated in rather aghast unison.

"Olive," confirmed Sirius Black with a sage nod. 

His best friends stared at him dubiously.

"And magenta," he threw in.

Remus cringed.

"D'you think you can do plaid on walls?" Sirius continued thoughtfully, stroking his chin.

"Let's not find out," Remus requested delicately, exchanging a glance with Peter. 

It was as they'd suspected.

They had created a monster.

It had all started out perfectly innocently, of course. Their friends James and Lily were newly married, and while they were off on their honeymoon, Remus, Sirius, and Peter had decided to purchase them a flat and fix it up a bit.

As soon as said flat had been purchased, it had become clear that 'a bit' simply wouldn't cut it. Nope, the tragically hideous excuse for a living space would have to be completely redone.

Sirius had found this to be a most intriguing prospect.

. . . Or perhaps that was putting it lightly. 

To quote precisely, as soon as they'd announced that they'd have to do some serious modifications on the house (which, little did they know, would instead become _Sirius_ modifications. Ha. Ha. Haha.), the ever-eccentric Mr. Black had proclaimed the following:

"_Gasp_! Hot dancing Veela socks!" (-No one bothered to ask about such things anymore-) "This is _it_! This is what I'm meant to do! I, Sirius Black, am destined to be . . ."

"Celestina Warbeck's lover?" Remus had inquired rather tonelessly.

"No, no, no!" Sirius had cried impatiently. "That was last week's dream career! And," he added with a rather stern look at Remus, "It's not 'lover'. It's 'sex toy'. Get it right, Moony."

"My sincerest apologies," Remus had deadpanned.

"I," Sirius had announced in a heroic sort of way, and dramatic music swelled in the background (but not really), " . . . Am going to be an interior designer."

"You do this," Remus had said.

And so he did.

Which leads us to our present . . . situation.

"Are you sure Lily and James would _want_ olive and magenta walls?" Peter ventured.

"Who _wouldn't_?" Sirius demanded, waving his hands in a rather mad fashion and very narrowly missing Peter's face. "Are you in-sin-u-a-ting that my mas-ter-piece isn't working for you?"

The excess hyphens, which resulted in rather jerky pauses, had started popping up randomly when Sirius got especially passionate over his . . . work.

Er.

I mean:

Mas-ter-piece.

"Why don't we just go with white?" Remus suggested timidly.

"WHITE?!" Sirius exploded. "WHITE?! White is too pure, too _innocent_! White cannot begin to capture the dark, dirty suffering that we have faced! WHITE DOES NOT EXPRESS THE CORRUPTION THROUGH WHICH WE LIVE EACH DAY!"

" . . . But olive and magenta do?" asked Peter weakly. Remus shook his head in amused disbelief.

"Olive and magenta?!" Sirius repeated in horror. "Who said anything about olive and magenta?! BLAAAACK! PAINT IT BLACK! PAINT IT _ALL_ BLACK!"

"Sirius?" asked Remus.

"Yes?" Sirius responded innocently, fluttering his eyelashes.

"Would you take it personally if I Stunned you?"

"Depends," Sirius responded earnestly. "You know, I--"

He paused.

"What?" Peter asked.

"I don't know," Sirius responded in an extremely philosophical and pensive way. "I just felt as though . . . I'd been hugged a million, trillion, zillion times."

Remus and Peter exchanged a look.

"Do you think," Remus asked in an undertone, "That Lily and James' love will be so blind that they won't notice they're living in the most atrocious place to ever come into existence?"

"I do hope so," Peter responded. "For their sake."

Meanwhile, Sirius had begun to dance The Bunny Hop across the living room while distractedly warbling the lyrics to 'Paint it Black' to himself.

*

"I have decided," Sirius announced the next morning when he arrived at the strangely . . . white-painted, modestly decorated home, "That this house needs a theme!"

Remus and Peter, both of whom could barely keep their eyes open and sported identical looks of extreme exhaustion, looked back in numbed horror. Lily and James were due home that evening, and Moony and Wormtail worked until five o'clock in the morning the night before on creating the perfect newlywed flat.

Which surely did not involve . . .

"Toothpaste!" Sirius proclaimed majestically.

"Sirius," Remus replied, very calmly. "No."

"But it's so _boring_!" Sirius wailed. "Look at what this place has become without my creative flair! It looks like my parents' house!"

"Sirius," Remus said with waning patience, "Where would you rather live? Your parents' house . . . or Toothpaste Land?"

Sirius raised an eyebrow at him. "Need you even ask?"

Remus sighed heavily and mumbled, "Just thought I'd try."

Sirius, meanwhile, skipped off, singing something that sounded suspiciously like, "Toothpaste Land, Toothpaste Land, where the ducks run free and the cheese is grand!"

Remus buried his face in his hands, and Peter let out a miserable squeak before repeatedly banging his head against the kitchen table.

*

You, the readers, are probably wondering by now exactly how things are going for Lily and James on their honeymoon in Paris. Or perhaps you're already frightened by Sirius' rather psychotic antics and just need a break from his madness. (This, I do suppose, is understandable. Except to a certain acquaintance of the narrator who is, I must admit, a bit mad.)

Well, well, well. Now, my dear readers, I must ask you to look back to the very first chapter of Meet the Parents. Do you, perchance, remember a certain bit of advice Sirius gave to Mr. Evans during that legendary chapter that started it all?

Just in case you don't (shame), I will enlighten you.

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SIRIUS BLACK'S ADVICE REGARDING BEING IN THE COMPANY OF JAMES POTTER AND LILY EVANS-POTTER:

1. Have a chaperone with them at all times.

2. Do not leave them alone together.

3. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT GO INTO A ROOM IF YOU HEAR LILY SCREAM 'JAMES, YOU TIGER!' FROM IT.

Where were we originally?

Oh, yes. The honeymoon.

"James! You _tiger_!"

. . . And that's all you're getting of that.

*

Sirius had been sobbing dramatically for the past eighteen and a half minutes.

"Sirius," Remus requested languidly, downing another shot of Ogdens Old Firewhisky, "For the love of _God_, stop it."

"YOU!" Sirius shouted in between sobs. "YOU JUST DOTE UPON MY PAIN! YOU . . . YOU'RE JEALOUS THAT I'VE FOUND WHAT I WANT TO DO FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, AND YOU'RE TRYING TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME!"

"Sirius," Remus said miserably, "Lily and James don't _want_ a toothpaste-themed house."

"You know what I think?" Sirius asked, his eyes sparkling dangerously.

"Unfortunately not," Remus replied sardonically.

"I think that you could pull off pink robes like nobody's business," Sirius informed him in a confidential tone.

Remus arched an eyebrow.

"Er . . . not . . . literally, of course."

"Right."

"I also think that you dote upon my pain," Sirius threw in for good measure. "Again."

"Sirius, I do not _dote upon your pain_," Remus snapped impatiently.

"Well, then, why won't you let my creative brilliance flourish?" Sirius whined.

"Fine," Remus capitulated. "_Fine_. You can do one room."

Sirius' eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Really," Remus confirmed.

"_Any_ room?" Sirius continued, a rather devious grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

If Remus Lupin weren't suffering many, many hours without sleep, going insane over the stress of putting up with his hyperactive best friend, and getting rather drunk out of his mind thanks to the Firewhisky, he may have actually _noticed_ aforementioned devious grin.

But alas, Remus Lupin _was_ all the things listed above.

And so he uttered those fateful, fateful words.

"Any room."

(_Dun dun DUN._)


	2. The Erotic Appeal of Sirius Black

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Author's Note: This is, at the moment, a plotless mess filled with lots of insanity and OOC-ness galore. It probably will never improve, but . . . ah well. 

I am still trying to convince myself that I am possessed while I write this, as the amount of insanity that Sirius has simply could not have come from my mind.

Or something.

Thank you for all of the reviews. :-) I have the feeling this won't be as good as MtP at all, on account of the whole no-plot-lots-of-madness thing, but I'll try!

Chapter Two: The Erotic Appeal of Sirius Black

"I can't believe we have our own _house_!" Lily cried happily, throwing her arms around Remus for about the thirtieth time in the past ten minutes. "Oh, thank you so much!"

Remus chuckled as she moved onto Peter, who blushed as she pecked him on the cheek.

"I designed one of the rooms all by myself," Sirius announced proudly. "Let's just wait and see if you can identify which one is a Sirius Black creation!"

Lily and James exchanged nervous glances before forcing smiles at Sirius. 

"We . . . can't wait," Lily assured him weakly.

"Yeah, Padfoot," James agreed, grinning. "I'm sure it'll be great."

"Great can't even begin to describe it, Jamesie old buddy!" Sirius proclaimed. "It is . . . aouearhaoiruwpahaierwuoahito!"

. . .

"Aouearhaoiruwpahaierwuoahito?" repeated Lily; after a moment of consideration, she added, "I have no idea how on earth I managed to pronounce that."

"It's my new word!" Sirius announced, beaming. "You like?"

"It sounds like something that an extremely bored fanfiction author would come up with because they were too lazy to dig out a thesaurus so they just slammed their hands against the keyboard a few times," Peter said tentatively.

No one noticed.

(Which, of course, led to hostility, which led to temptation, which led to . . . well, bad things. A moment of silence in which everyone can curse that damnable Wormtail. ___________. Okay. Resuming story, then.)

"Onward!" Sirius cried dramatically, swinging open the door. Lily, James, and Remus all exchanged rather bemused expressions. Peter kicked the ground and looked bitter and hostile.

"If this makes up for it at all - and I doubt it will," Remus was saying in a rather panicked undertone, "I wasn't in my right mind when I agreed to let him do this."

"I'm sure it won't be that bad," Lily consoled as they followed a frighteningly excited Sirius up the stairs.

"Don't be," Remus muttered.

Sirius led them through the hall, positively beaming, and stopped in front of a rather innocent-looking door.

"Oh, no," groaned Remus. "Not the bedroom."

Lily and James looked increasingly fearful.

"Voilà!" Sirius cried, swinging open the door with flourish. Alas, he swung it open with such flourish that it slammed against the wall, there was an audible crash, and it came back to hit him right in the face.

A sense of extreme trepidation hung in the air as Sirius cleared his throat in a very businesslike manner and said, "Take two, then. Eh eh ehm - **voilà**!!"

The door swung open, and Lily, James, and Remus all recoiled in horror. Grinning roguishly at them from every inch of the walls was . . . Sirius.

"Like it?" Sirius asked, sounding extremely proud of himself. "I got a photoshoot done - this room contains one thousand and twelve pictures of me! And one of Gilderoy Lockhart and me," he threw in as an afterthought, "Stupid git was walking by and saw the camera and BAM! Zoomed toward it like he'd been Summoned."

"Imagine that," Lily said faintly.

James was silent, staring at the one thousand and twelve pictures of Sirius (and one of Gilderoy) in horror.

"The sheets also have me on them," Sirius continued. "Tricky little charm I remembered from Flitwick's class."

James blinked intelligently.

Lily looked as though she was about to lose consciousness.

Remus, who had gone eerily pale, mumbled something that sounded a lot like 'aouearhaoiruwpahaierwuoahito'.

"Isn't it, though?" Sirius asked proudly, surveying his masterpiece. "Look! There's even a mobile!"

Lily, James, and Remus looked up toward the ceiling to see that there was, true to his word, a mobile with six-inch-tall Siriuses hanging from it, waving madly.

"James, darling," Lily said weakly, "How do you feel about remaining celibate for the rest of our lives? Because quite frankly, there is no way in _hell_ that I'm going to--"

A rather oblivious Sirius cut in, "You're probably wondering why I selected this theme."

"Because you have serious ego problems?" Remus suggested.

Sirius glared. "Of _course_ not! It's because, well, I'm well aware how desirable I am--"

"Hence the serious ego problem," Remus muttered darkly.

"--And I thought that, well, if _anything's_ going to increase the sex drive in your marriage, it's _moi_!" Sirius continued. He added in a quieter tone, "You know, I'm almost an erotic symbol."

"Sirius," James cut in through gritted teeth, "What is wrong with you?"

Sirius seemed to consider this question with much thought. Finally, he answered, "You know, I think it all springs from my troubled childhood - after all, my mother _is_ an absolute hag, and--"

"Sirius," James said dangerously, "No amount of childhood problems could make up for . . . _this_."

"Really?" Sirius asked, looking as though this was very much news to him. "Well, then, I suppose I'm just mental."

"To unsurpassable proportions," Remus agreed.

"But I couldn't be any other way!" Sirius proclaimed. "That's downright out of character!"

(Which, the author feels compelled to point out, is sarcastic, as she doubts Sirius has ever been more out of character in the history of fanfiction.)

"Sirius," Lily said gently, "We really, really appreciate this, but . . ."

"But?" Sirius echoed, his face falling.

"But . . ." Lily repeated, looking to James and Remus for help. Both remained rather silent. James still looked as though he would very much like to kill something. Remus, on the contrary, looked as though he'd like to be killed. (Which, if one considers it, could all work out.) 

"But you're just too damn good-looking!" Lily finally said firmly. Sirius seemed to brighten considerably thanks to this comment. "I can't imagine a way I'd be able to stay faithful to James when I was constantly staring at you! Hell, even _James_ wouldn't be able to stay faithful."

"Hey!" James cried indignantly.

"So, really, Sirius," Lily continued, "I think we're going to have to redecorate, much as I absolutely love this."

"Ah, I understand completely!" Sirius said, no longer looking at all put out by this. "After all, the last thing I'd want to do in the world is come between the marriage of my best friends! It just wouldn't be right."

"Precisely," Lily agreed, nodding fervently.

"Moony, on the other hand," Sirius continued, arching an eyebrow suggestively, "Is single. Whaddya say? This fabulous bedroom design could be yours."

"Sirius," Remus replied gravely. "There are no words."

"Really, now?" Sirius asked, taking a few steps away from him in alarm. "'Cause you know, I was actually just joking--"

"No words in a _bad_ way," Remus informed him darkly.

"Oh," Sirius replied. "Right. It's okay, then."

Remus, Lily, and James, who had just had a very terrifying encounter and all doubted that things would ever be truly okay again, just forced weak smiles.

"So, no Sirius Bedroom," Sirius said, clapping his hands efficiently. "All right. That's fine with me." 

A moment of consideration.

"How do you two feel about olive and magenta?"


End file.
